The Idea of Order at Key West (pt. 2)

The last class discussion surrounding The Idea of Order at Key West focused predominantly on the woman’s use of language to create meaning in ways that cannot be replicated by human-less nature.  The discussion promoted authorship and human creation as powerful and more capable of revealing the essence of a thing than nature without human interaction.  Furthermore, when discussing the best way to portray Key West, the class found that representations involving human conception might have a more powerful influence on the interpreter’s ability to understand the moment at the sea.

If we are aiming to understand the moment at sea felt by a human, then perhaps the painting or creative illustrations are most useful.  However, is this what we always strive to do?  Is the emphasis on authorship vital to understanding the essence of a thing or merely a moment to be shared by people?  Why is it that the human element breathes life into meaning?  Is it just that the tools used to create meaning are more familiar than the raw elements seen in nature and in turn make more sense to us?  Is there not an additional imagination factor that invites the reader to use creativity in the interpretation of meaning?  When telling someone about Key West through a painting, the emotional experience of the creator is intrinsically woven into the work.  However, does this make the piece more interesting or vital to connecting one human to the work?  Is there any merit in the reader’s response to raw nature, regardless of whether the familiar language we use to communicate is absent?  

The Idea of Order at Key West (pt. 1)

Wallace Stevens’ The Idea of Order at Key West

Jaques Derrida’s literary theory of deconstruction claims meaning “cannot legitimately transgress the text toward something other than it, toward a referent (a reality that is metaphysical, historical, psychobiographical, etc.) or toward a signified outside the text whose content could take place, could have taken place outside of language, that is to say, in the sense that we give here to that word, outside of writing in general…There is nothing outside the text.” Thus, art meaning comes from non-contingent, variable chance and an unlimited number of meanings can be taken from a work.  Because texts are recontextualized when read throughout history by different readers, meaning will change based on the workings of signification of the text for that person. 

The Idea of Order at Key West suggests a familiar relationship to text and the sea and the meaning and the she.   It seems that the sea works like the text with “empty sleeves” causing “constant cry”, however incomprehensible because of its inhumanity.  It is dead, like unread words on a page.  The woman, however, is a different entity.  While she mimics the sea’s every word, her song is entirely different and is the voice heard.  Stevens calls her, “the maker of the song she sang” which seems to bring in Derrida’s idea of deconstruction.  The sea’s song is the text, the language which meaning will derive from completely.  However, her song is the one that derives the meanings.  The sea’s song is home to the place she “walks to sing” though it is no more than “meaningless plunges of water and wind”.  When she sings in summer, she brings in “theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped on high horizons, mountainous atmospheres of sea and sky.”  These significations allow for the possibly selfless sea to become, “the self that was her song, for she was the maker.”  Thus, all meaning is derived from a text and only a text, but it is the signification of the reader that gives it life.